Earnest, I am very happy to see your post here. It is often the "Simple Stuff" that people just ignore and instead post rants and tirades about bad battery life or poor phone performance.

You can increase your battery life by AT LEAST 8% by deleting face book. Even if you do not use FB, it uses you. Removing the unused app will reduce the wear and tear on the OS enough to increase the battery life by 8%.

My phone has been on the battery for 11 hrs and 10 minutes and still has 90%. I did only have two calls and I judiciously monitor my WiFi and Bluetooth usage. On week ends, I take my phone off charge on Friday at 5AM and do not put it back on charge till 11PM on Sunday and it still has 70-80% on it (once I still had 90%). If you learn to use the tips and tricks for saving power, these phones can go for days. HOWEVER, if you live on the internet and consume GB's of data on a regular base, your battery is gonna suck. Nothing is free and all that time uploading and downloading not only takes a toll on the GB plan, it eats battery to do it.

If you really want to make your phone last, delete ALL your apps, never use the internet and try to avoid using your phone for anything except calling. You can make it last for days but then again, at that point, what's the point of having a smart phone?

It's a balancing act between using your phone how you want to and making the phone last. But minimizing functionality of the phone for the sake of battery life defeats the purpose of having "smart phones."